


come on and open your eyes

by owlinaminor



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, First Kiss, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-08
Updated: 2019-09-08
Packaged: 2020-10-12 15:11:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20566430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlinaminor/pseuds/owlinaminor
Summary: I carved our initials into the kissing bridge, did you know that?  And this was like seventh grade, The Summer.  The carving was aspirational, like drawing hearts in margins or Ben’s fucking postcard.  But it was real, because I made it real.  We made it real.  It still is.





	come on and open your eyes

**Author's Note:**

> on my computer this fic is called "i get it about bill hader now.doc."
> 
> title and epithet from [back to you by hudson taylor](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMR2pDfvF4I).

> _it’s really breaking my heart, I never got over you.  
come on and open your eyes, I’m coming back to you._

Imagine two letters, carved into a bridge.

The lines are worn, eroded, like a swear word carved into a desk in pen by some delinquent freshman, desperate to leave any kind of mark. They blend into the peeling paint of the whitewashed wood, cross-stitches among the blocky hearts and weather-worn lines. They could belong to anyone.

Richie Tozier runs his index finger over the wood. His skin catches on the tip of a splinter. He pulls his finger back before it can start bleeding.

Summer is strange, in Maine. It never quite gets hot like you expect it to—sure, it’s warm if you sit in the sunlight, and you’ll work up a sweat if you go for a run, maybe jump into the quarry. But you’ll be cold a few minutes later, from the wind wailing in. And at night—don’t even think about it. Richie’s a fucking idiot, he should’ve brought a jacket. Something warmer than these old jeans and bright blue button-down. It’s almost September already, Christ.

“Richie? Aren’t you cold?” The whisper carries easily in the darkness. Richie turns and sees Eddie in his back doorway, framed by the fluorescent light coming in from the living room. Framed: the angles of his face, his long cheekbones, his pouting mouth. His eyes, wide and dark, and searching, always searching. _Christ._

Richie uncrosses his arms—his hands drop to his sides. “No,” he says. “I’m fine.”

“You sure? ‘Cause I can get you an extra jacket if you—”

“I said I’m _fine.”_

“Alright, alright,” Eddie says, pulling the door closed slowly behind him so that the hinges don’t creak.

But they end up sharing Eddie’s coat, sitting at the quarry drop-off point. Bony shoulders pressed together. Richie draws the left sleeve closer against his chest, pretends his skin isn’t on fire every place they touch.

“Are you ready?” he asks. His voice echoes above the water, consonants mixing with the cicadas.

“Ready for what?” Eddie replies.

“You know—leaving, college, the big world, all of it.” Richie throws one arm out, as though the pinprick stars and the shadows of trees and their faint reflections in the water could be the whole world, if you looked hard enough. His side of the jacket falls, and he scrambles to pick it up.

Eddie laughs, and drops his side, then throws his arm around Richie, giving him most of the jacket with it—pulling him closer.

“I better be, after all the work it took for my mom to let me go,” he says. “Do you know she made me promise to call her every day? Every goddamn day, before I go to bed.”

“That’s only ‘cause she’s calling _me_ every day _after_ you go to bed.”

“Jesus.”

Richie is silent for a minute after that, listening to the echo. The cicadas, the wind. It won’t be quiet like this at night, where he’s going. Won’t be dark, either. No excuses to hold on to someone.

“Hey.” Eddie jostles his shoulder, his fingers knocking against Richie’s arm.

“Yeah?” Richie turns to look at him—and _fuck_ he’s close, Richie has to take stock of the shapes of his nose, cheeks, lips.

“What is it? The thing you wanted to tell me.”

“What?”

Richie tries to pull away, but Eddie says, “Come on,” tugs a little on Richie’s arm through the jacket. “You said, you had something important to tell me. It’s why I’m here instead of sleeping, when I’ve got a ten-hour drive tomorrow and orientation after that, where I could step in poison ivy or get Lyme disease or something—”

“Okay. Yeah. Fine.”

Richie shifts: lets the jacket drop, stands up, runs a hand through his hair, sits back down. Adjusts his glasses. There’s a half-moon tonight, enough light to see the look on Eddie’s face when he turns—nervous and worried, and something else, some undercurrent of tension that Richie can’t place.

“Okay,” Richie says again. He wipes his hands on his jeans. “Look—you’re the bravest person I know.”

“What?” Eddie’s eyes are wide in the darkness. “Not Bill, or Bev, or—”

“No. You.” Richie takes a deep breath, goes on. “You had the most to be scared of, and you stuck with us. And you convinced your mom to let you go to college, that far, I mean—” He shakes his head. “It’s fucking impressive, okay? You’ve brave. You make me want to be braver. So I—I thought you deserved to know—I mean—fuck.”

Richie turns away, takes off his glasses and rubs at his eyes. “Fuck.”

But before he can put his glasses back on, there’s a hand on his. Warm, a pulse beating inside.

“Come on,” Eddie says. “Every second you don’t spit it out is another second I could be bitten by a tick, or—”

Richie pulls him in. It’s clumsy—all touch and shadow, his glasses clattering to the ground. He kisses the corner of Eddie’s mouth first. And that’s soft, a little slippery—is he wearing _chapstick—_and then Richie turns his head, or Eddie does, and they’re kissing for real. Wet, warm, hard to breathe, fucking _incredible_ real.

_You kissed me back,_ Richie scribbles down in his drug store notebook, sitting up against a hotel headboard, twenty-two years later. _You kissed me back, and then it took us like ten minutes to find my glasses, and then we went back to your house and you kissed me on the cheek real soft and said you’d call. And you died before I could ask you if you remembered any of it. Fucking asshole. Selfless bastard. Running in there for me like I was anything worth—_

_You were the bravest of us all. I meant it then, and I mean it now. You faced the demon screaming. I wish I could tell the whole world. Put your eulogy in the _New York _fucking _Times. _Eddie Kaspbrak, he was my friend, he kicked ass at Pacman, he wore the best fanny packs, and he died unafraid. Fuck. It hurts to put you in the past tense._

_I think I was carrying you with me, those years after we left Derry. You said you’d call, and you did at first, but then I didn’t go home for Thanksgiving or for Christmas, and suddenly I was shrugging when people asked me where I’m from and how I got my smart mouth. But you were still there, under my skin. Telling me to get a flu shot, bring an umbrella when the forecast says rain, apologize when the bullshit goes too far. Believe I’m a good person under the bravado. A person who isn’t always scared, always hiding._

_I carved our initials into the kissing bridge, did you know that? And this was like seventh grade, The Summer. The carving was aspirational, like drawing hearts in margins or Ben’s fucking postcard. But it was real, because I made it real. We made it real. It still is._

Richie Tozier strides onto stage, waves at his audience, and takes a long swig of his beer. “The worst thing about being a gay man,” he says, “is that I have to get so much more creative with the _your mom_ jokes.”

**Author's Note:**

> yell with me and/or at me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/owlinaminor).


End file.
